Keeping Score
by LexLemon
Summary: Jack, finally, lets those three little words slip. Absolutely break-your-teeth sweetness.


**Title:** Keeping Score  
**  
Author:** LexKitten  
**  
Summary:** Jack, finally, lets those three little words slip. Absolutely break-your-teeth sweetness.

**Set/Spoilers:** Season 9/10. Spoilers up to early S9.

**Rating:** PG. If that *blush* so tame.

**A/N:** For the Sam and Jack ficathon at GW. Prompt: "The first time they say 'I love you'". Yes, I wrote *two* fics for this prompt. *blush*

Thanks to Judyhild for the last minute beta!

Oh god. Brush your teeth after this one kids. There is more sweetness in this than in a bucket load of toffee. I'm sorry. I have this really awful muse that likes to come up with this terrible fluffy dialog . forgive me.

***

"So, the whole place is giving off massive kinetic-gamma radiation, right?" Sam continued, her voice floating into the kitchen over the chorus of cheers and commentary from the pre-game hype on the big TV set in her lounge-room.

"Right," Jack agreed, having no idea at all what she was talking about. Jack had learned long ago to smile and nod when his girlfriend talked physics. If he tried to understand the principal behind the complex syllables, Jack thought his feeble mortal brain might explode. It didn't bother him much anymore – he just let her talk, and enjoyed the sound of her voice.

He kept his focus on the task at hand – creating exactly equal portions of vanilla and chocolate ice-cream in two little bowls.

"The whole de-molecular module of the ancient weapon is shot to pieces and spewing a kind of gaseous trinium, and I'm there, on my knees, trying to infuse the liquid coolant core of the control panel with syphoned hydro-chlorate from the sub-capacitor -" she paused briefly to take the vanilla ice-cream from Jack's hands as he returned to the couch beside her, giving him a quick kiss. "Oh, thanks. Anyway, there I am – and bare in mind I'm an astro-physicist! I mean, I don't really know that much about radio- chemistry."

"Yeah, it's shocking how little you know about '_hydro-colgate_'," Jack chided. He eyed her ice-cream and opened his mouth expectantly. "Taste," he instructed.

Sam obligingly stuck an ice-cream covered spoon into his mouth, without pausing in her recounting of SG1's recent mission. " So, I think maybe I've finally got the core temp low enough, when what does Cam do?"

"Shoots something?" Jack suggested, offering Sam a spoon of chocolate ice cream in return.

She licked the blob of ice cream off the spoon like a cat, quickly folding her tongue back into her mouth so she could continue speaking. "He shoots it!" she slurred. "The whole control started to violently ionise, and all the latent trinium-carbon alloys in the air started to polarise and discharge all over the place – you can imagine how crazy it was!"

Jack closed his eyes, and imagined an underground pirate cave, filled with treasure, where Sam (wearing a Princess Leia style gold bikini instead of her usual BDU's) was fighting against a giant robotic octopus that could shoot lasers from its tentacles. Obviously, this was nothing like what Sam was describing, but Jack thought it made a pretty cool adventure anyway.

He opened his eyes, to see his girlfriend tilting her head sideways, and furrowing her brow at him. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"No," he admitted.

Sam grinned at him, with that 'you're-so-funny-when-you're-dumb' smile she so often used on him. "The point is, Cam was stupid, and I saved the day," she summarised.

"Ah, as usual," Jack replied. "That's my girl." He leaned over and gave her a sloppy chocolate smudge kiss that was aimed at her cheek but missed and brushed onto her ear. "I love you."

Suddenly, there was one of those minute shifts in the universe where you can feel the fabric of the cosmos change slightly, but you're not sure how. Jack knew something had just happened, but he didn't know what. Like maybe the earth had suddenly flipped it's axis, or maybe all the hydro-colgate atoms in the air had started to depolarise. Something was different.

Sam sat up slightly; her body minutely less relaxed than a moment before. Uh-oh, now Sam had changed. She kept her eyes on the TV, but she was now wearing that dangerous 'I-know-something-you-don't-know' smile. "You know, that's the first time you've ever said that to me," she said.

Jack felt his heart drop into his stomach. What? That couldn't be right, he thought feverishly. He'd been 'seeing' his ex 2IC for almost eight months now, ever since he first transferred away from the SGC. Eight entire months - and he'd never said he loved her? Which, of course he did, and he sure as hell meant it. It couldn't have slipped his mind to actually _say it,_ could it? "That _can't _be right," he stammered.

Sam, eyes straight forward, smiled even wider. "It is."

"No, no." Jack shook his head firmly. "I said it last week, when I called from Washington to say I couldn't come for the weekend."

"That was '_miss you_,'" Sam quoted back at him.

Jack realised, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, that she was right. "Well, before then, maybe," he suggested. "Surely when – when we first had 'the talk' , after I got transferred."

Sam shook her head. "That was _'I care about you',_" she said, licking ice-cream off the back of her hand where it had dripped from her spoon. She licked her lips, her eyes glinting in the reflection of the TV set. "And _'to hell with the regs'._"

"Our first date!" Jack pleaded.

"What, fishing with Teal'c and Daniel?" Sam snorted. "I think you said, '_I told you this was a good idea'_."

Jack felt his face getting hot. How could he possibly have not said it? He was grasping at straws. "In bed," he suggested gruffly.

Sam spluttered with laughter, almost choking on a mouthful of ice-cream. She turned to him and smiled ruefully, "Don't get me wrong, you've said plenty of nice things…just not that."

Jack gulped. He and Sam had agreed to be pretty casual with the whole 'seeing each other thing' – especially since they were still keeping it a secret. And she wasn't the kind of girl who demanded big romantic gestures. A night at home every fortnight or so was about as much as their careers would allow. Still, this was a pretty big oversight. He wondered, behind the smiles and laughs, just how much trouble he was in. Carter knew how give a punishment, when she wanted to.

And then, something occurred to him. "Wait a minute," he turned around in his seat, so he was facing her properly, though Sam kept her eyes forward. "I would have said it back, if you said it first," he reasoned. "So that means – you've never said it either."

Sam went visibly red. She slowly, purposefully, lifted a spoonful of ice cream to her lips. Jack caught her wrist and held her hand still, a few inches from her mouth. "Carter…"

"I've said it plenty of times," she said, her ears going red.

Jack leaned closer, scrutinising her closely, watching every muscle in her face stay perfectly still to give away as little as possible. "When?" he asked, letting his breath rustle the hair falling over her cheek.

Sam seemed to struggle inwardly, the corner of her mouth twitching slightly. Honesty – or perhaps the urge to confess – finally won out. She slumped back into the couch, mumbling quietly "Well, y'know … when you were unconscious in the infirmary, and I thought maybe – that maybe you might not… . I said it then." She was as red as a beet.

"I've had a lot of close calls," he reasoned. Jack inched even closer, so he could whisper in her ear. Her eyes followed him with miniscule movements. "Which time?"

Sam shut her eyes tight, as if she couldn't even bear to watch herself confess. "Every time. For the last ten years."

Jack grinned. His chest filled with that warm, kind of painful pressure that he always knew meant '_I love you_', even if he forgot to say it out-loud. He pulled her into his arms, where she gladly hid her face against his chest. "Well, if we're counting _those_ kinds of times, I must've said it at least a hundred times."

Sam looked up sharply, her eyes now narrow and curious. "When?"

Jack pushed a stray strand of hair out of her eyes, marvelling for a moment at how light it was up close, and wondering if it had always been so soft. "Every time you nearly blew yourself up saving our asses," he said, "Every time you barely pulled off some crazy plan. Every time you came home safe. I'd give you this look." He looked down into her face, and tried to conjure up that all too familiar expression of mingled relief and restraint. But, with her there in his arms, safe, happy, and _his_, it was kind of hard to recreate that painful feeling of knowing how close he had come to losing her, and knowing he couldn't tell her what that meant.

Sam put her warm fingers over his eyes. "I know the look," she said quietly.

"Well, it means _I love you_," he said. And, as a gravely gruff after-thought, "it always has."

Sam grinned up at him. "I know."

Jack bent his neck, and pressed his mouth to her forehead. "I love you," he said.

"And I love you," she replied.

Jack smiled against her hairline. "There's a first time for everything."

***


End file.
